


Broken Crayon

by danverspotsticker



Series: The Scoobs and The Weeping Willow [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-18 01:51:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5893558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danverspotsticker/pseuds/danverspotsticker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander thinks about Willow and all they've been through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Crayon

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This is purely my mind playing with characters that Joss Whedon created. Characters belong to Fox, The WB, Joss, all those humans and corporations.

He wonders if this is his punishment, seeing the world destroying his best friend so much that she thought destroying the world was okay. Well, you know, not okay but the way to go, that after all these years of saving the world with love that the final way to save it was to kill everything. Giles had told him that she was only thinking that way because she had too much power, but Giles also said that his magic tapped into her humanity. Sometimes he thinks about how maybe her humanity thought death was the way to go, wonders if she ever thought that on the days in grade school, and middle school, and high school when Cordy and her followers would ridicule Willow. He remembers a few far away looks after “Who gave you a reason to lives” and “Go tell someone who cares” that had twisted his stomach in a way he hadn’t understood then. He understands now that it was fear that Willow was going to disappear. Kinda like the way he imagines the way she did the moment Tara’s eyes closed for the final time. Willow had always been the stronger one, held it in a little too much, but she was stronger.  
He thinks he might be a terrible person for regretting doing CPR on Buffy that first time around, maybe Willow never would’ve lost Tara, or her optimism, or her innocence, maybe she wouldn’t have ever gotten addicted to dark magicks. He knows she’ll never be the Willow who screamed when he caught frogs or cried when she broke crayons again, knows she probably won’t smile quite as much or laugh with her eyes. But he knows she’ll come back from England, Giles said she might be there for a few weeks or a few years, depends how long she takes to repair her damage. Xander doesn’t have the heart to tell the old guy that damage like Willow’s takes more than one lifetime to repair.  
She calls once, said she’d been having nightmares that she’d killed him on Kingman’s Bluff. He tells her that he had the anvil as a backup plan, she doesn’t laugh like she would’ve in tenth grade. But Xander imagines the corners of her lips lift, he knows he’s kidding himself, carpenters aren’t stronger than slayers, and he doesn’t mean any offense to Buffy, but Will kicked her ass. Sometimes he wakes up sweating in a bed that feels too big without Anya, in a town that feels too big without Jesse, and reaches for a phone that feels too big in his hand without Willow answering it.  
He’d always had Willow to tell him he’d done the right thing, even when they both knew he hadn’t. Like the day after he left Anya, Willow had left him a furious voicemail, but had ended it saying that maybe now Anya would go back to being a vengeance demon, told him she always seemed happier a demon. He imagines that losing Tara had hurt more than walking away from Anya but he still tries to leave a message for Willow about how at least now Tara is with her mom and Giles calls back telling him that Willow can’t talk on the phone for the next few weeks. Xander almost asks if he means physically.  
They have Tara’s funeral and Willow’s not there and it feels wrong and Dawn cries and Buffy stares and Anya asks questions and Xander argues that they shouldn’t be having this without Willow. But Anya reminds him that Willow could be in England for the next decade and they can’t just have a decaying body hanging around the house all the time. Xander is about to argue that they could’ve flown Willow back for a day before he remembers the blank stare Willow had given the whole world when Giles had helped her onto the plane as they left. He imagines that if she would’ve been there that she would’ve burned herself from the inside out.  
Willow calls again and she uses Willow-y talk and Xander smiles because she sounds like herself before she says Giles needs to talk to him and Xander gets scared when Giles talks because he sounds solemn and Giles only sounds solemn when it’s the end of the world and then all he says is Willow needs to come back and Xander smiles and his eyes tear up and he’ll finally get to see his best friend again and he makes a poster out of yellow crayons and it breaks several times.  
He’s at the airport and Dawn is angry and scared and Buffy is angry and worried and he is happy and worried when he sees the pilots come off the plane and he thinks about how after the crayons for the sign had broken several times he had to use new ones and he wonders how long crayons last after they break. Xander doesn’t know a lot about wax and chemicals and paper but he’s an expert at Willow and he knows that even if she is a broken crayon she’ll still be yellow.


End file.
